Are you about to start your first blog? Maybe you’ve just got going, or you’re a few months in. You’re worried that you’ve missed something important – or you feel like you’re not seeing the success you should.
That may well be the case…but I’ve got you covered.
Like every blogger, I’ve made a few mistakes. I’ve had my share of frustrations, wasted time, and wasted money.
Like all successful bloggers, I kept going! It could’ve been easier, though – and I want to share some of my lessons learned so that you will succeed even faster than me.
Here’s what I wish I’d known before I started my first blog.
There’s a lot of info in this article, with plenty of practical, actionable steps for you to take, so I’ve split this post into four main parts:
Part 1: Getting Your Blog Set Up Right
Part 2: Focusing Your Blogging Efforts
Part 3: Making Your Blog Run Smoothly
Part 4: Having the Right Mindset
You might want to bookmark this post or even print it out for easy reference.
(Although it’s a long post, this isn’t an exhaustive list. If you’ve got a “lesson learned” to share that doesn’t appear here, please feel free to leave it in the comments.)
Part #1: Getting Your Blog Setup Right
Having the right setup for your blog, and the right tools, is essential. As your blog grows, you don’t want to be limited by using a hosted blogging platform – or by accidentally losing all your files or having your blog hacked.
1. Self-Hosted WordPress.org is Better Than Free Hosted WordPress.com
If your blog is just a hobby, and you’ve no intention of making money from it, or using it to support your business, then, of course, you can blog on WordPress.com – or Blogger, or any other platform of your choice.
But if you want to monetize your blog, you should be using self-hosted WordPress. That means buying your own domain name and paying for space with a web hosting company. Getting this setup might sound a little daunting – the truth is that there are plenty of great web hosting companies that make the process very straightforward with a “one-click installation”.
Top Tip: If you’ve started blogging elsewhere, and you’ve only written a couple of posts, the easiest way to switch is to simply set up your blog afresh and copy the posts over.
2. Your Choice of Web Host Matters
Don’t just choose a web host because a friend’s using it – or because you’ve got a coupon code. Do a bit of research and make sure you’re choosing a host that’s right for you and your blog. (This probably won’t be the very cheapest web host you can find.)
I’ve seen bloggers suffer serious problems because of choosing a poor hosting company. Their blogs go through frequent periods of downtime, the response time from technical support is abysmal, and inevitably, their traffic nosedives.
No hosting company is perfect, and you’ll find that everyone has negative reviews.
Top Tip: If you’re not happy with your current web host, switching might be less of a pain than you think. Most WordPress hosting companies offer free migration services – just ask the support team for your host, if you’re not sure!
3. Backups are Super Important
Have you ever had a friend or fellow blogger tell you to backup – right now? Chances are, they’ve just suffered a catastrophic loss … and they really wish they’d kept frequent backups. Don’t make the same mistake.
“Backup my blog” is the sort of task that sits on to-do lists for ages, especially if you’re not quite sure how to go about it. Promise yourself that you’ll back it up today – or at least this week.
Top Tip: Store your backed-up files in the cloud, so that if your computer dies – or if you’re away from home when your site suffers a catastrophic failure – you’ll be able to retrieve them easily.
4. You Should be Worried About Security
If you’ve only recently started blogging, you probably feel almost invincible. Hardly anyone knows your blog exists (though you wish they would). It might seem laughable to think that your blog could be hacked – why would a hacker even try?
Hacking attempts are often automated, though. Your blog could get hacked regardless of how new and obscure it is … unless you’ve taken active steps to protect it.
Top Tip: The best way to keep your blog safe is to use a plugin like Sucuri: they keep your website safe, and if it does get infected with malware, they’ll clean it up.
5. Build Your Email List From Day One
Although RSS subscribers and social media followers are great, whatreally matters is how many email subscribers you have. So how do you go about building your list?
One great starting point is to create an incentive—a reason for someone to subscribe (beyond “you’ll get my awesome blog posts!”). You need to give them a compelling reason to hand over their email address – and a portion of their attention.
These incentives are called lead magnets. A few example of lead magnets can be:
A short .pdf guide or ebook.
A “cheatsheet”, checklist, poster or other quick-to-use resource.
An audio recording or video that isn’t available to the general public.
A short online course that teaches them something.
You can go even further and create some different incentives, tailored to different pieces of content on your blog. These are called “content upgrades” and they’re very effective because they offer more content on something that the reader is already engaged with.
Once you’ve got your incentive in place, make sure people know about it!
Hopefully, you’ve already got a sign-up form in your blog’s sidebar – but how many people actually notice that?
You’ll want to consider using:
After post forms: great for catching people’s attention when they’ve enjoyed a piece of content and they’re deciding what to do next.
Slide-ins: because they move, these are more eye-catching than a form that just sits in your sidebar or footer.
Floating header and footer bars: these scroll along with the user, so they’re always visible on their screen (without covering up your great content).
Pop-ups: although some bloggers are reluctant to use these because they think they’ll annoy readers, pop-ups can be extremely effective at increasing your email sign-ups.
Welcome gates: these take over the whole screen when a user first arrives on your site: a sure-fire way to provide a warm welcome and to get attention.
Contact forms: you can add a checkbox to your contact form to let people sign up for your email list, and/or add a check box for this when they leave a comment.
Top Tip: If you really want to get serious about building your email list, check out OptinMonster, it is tool I built to help grow my own email list. Thousands of people use it to convert website visitors into subscribers. You can create all sorts of email sign-up forms and split-test them.
Part #2: Focusing Your Blogging Efforts
Some beginners start out blogging about whatever happens to be on their mind on any given day – especially if they’re building a personal brand under their own name (like syedbalkhi.com) instead of a blog that could be run by a team (like WPBeginner.com).
To build a strong readership, you need to focus on topics that fit sensibly together – and that your readers actually want to read about. These suggestions will help you do that.
6. Get Clear About Categories Versus Tags
Whatever blogging platform you use, it’ll probably allow for both “categories” and “tags”. Some bloggers use these almost interchangeably – which isn’t correct – and others fail to make good use of them.
Categories are Like a Table of Contents for Your Blog
They list the major topic areas that you cover. For instance, a blog on personal development might have categories like “Time Management” and “Health”. Every post you write has to have a category (if you don’t set one, the default is “Uncategorized” – make sure you change that to something more relevant to your blog).
You can put posts in two or more categories, though if you find you’re regularly doing so, it might be worth considering combining two categories together, or turning some lesser-used categories into tags.
Tags are Like an Index for Your Blog
They’re much more granular than categories, and some tags might only be used for one or two posts on your entire blog. A personal development blog might have tags like “Pomodoro Method” or “Early Rising”. Posts don’t have to have a tag.
You can have multiple tags for one post. Make sure you don’t use them in a spammy way (having multiple very similar tags to target slightly different keywords) – this looks bad to readers.
Top Tip: Don’t try to come up with a whole list of categories on your first day of blogging. Instead, think of three or four that you’ll commonly use – and gradually add more over time, when required.
7. Add and USE Google Analytics
One of the very best ways to know what to write about next, or which older posts to invest further time in, is to use Google Analytics. This free tool provides you with a huge amount of data about the visitors to your blog: where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying, what posts they’re reading, what browsers and devices they’re using, and more.
Once you’ve installed Analytics, make sure you use it! I know this sounds obvious – but a huge number of bloggers get it installed then never look at their data.
Top Tip: Set aside a regular time each week to login to your Google Analytics dashboard and look for useful trends.
Part #3: Getting the Most from Your Content
Don’t simply rush posts out onto your blog and leave it at that: otherwise, you’re not going to be able to compete with established blogs with high standards. Instead, make sure you get the most from the posts you’ve written.
8. Publish Quality Posts, Consistently
Some new bloggers think they need to publish every day – or even several times a day. That’s not true. What matters is not the quantity of posts you produce but the quality of those posts.
Readers like to be confident that your posts are worth their time. After all, wouldn’t you rather read one great insightful post every week instead of having to go through a rushed, badly structured post every day?
To help your readers know what to expect, make sure you publish posts on a regular, consistent basis. Don’t publish three posts a week for a month then nothing for the next month.
Top Tip: Create a content calendar to help you plan upcoming posts. If possible, get ahead with writing your content – that way, you won’t need to rush posts out at the last-minute.
9. Get to Grips With On-Page SEO
You might be thinking of SEO (search engine optimization) in terms of getting links to your site from other sites – and while that’s important, it’s definitely not the whole story.
Your on-page SEO matters too – and it’s fully within your control. This means using:
Keywords: thinking about what someone might type into a search engine in order to find a post on your topic. You can research the keywords that people are actually using with the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, and you may want to adjust your post’s title or content a little to be a good fit for reasonably popular keywords. (A “keyword” can be a whole phrase, not necessarily just one word.)
Interlinking: adding links to older posts (or going back and updating old ones to link to newer ones, too). This isn’t just good for your SEO – it helps readers to engage more deeply with your blog. Each time you write a post, make sure you include a link to at least one other post or page on your blog.
Meta tags: if you have an SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack installed, you can easily set the title and meta description for your post. This title shows up in search engine results and in the browser tab for the post. The meta description normally appears in search engine results, too. Both should contain your target keywords; they should also be enticing to users.
Sitemaps: An XML sitemap is for search engines, telling them all the pages that exist on your site. It won’t directly boost your search engine ranking, but it will help the search engines to crawl your site more easily.
Google Search Console: This free service, previously called Google Webmaster Tools, lets you perform various useful functions – like submitting and checking your sitemap, checking and setting the crawl rate for the site, viewing lists of URLs that Google was unable to crawl, and much more. You can access it here.
Top Tip: If this all seems a bit overwhelming, try getting to grips with one item on this list at a time. Look online for a tutorial or step-by-step instructions, or ask other blogger friends how they’re putting that aspect of SEO into practice.
10. Guest Posting Gives You Access to a Huge Audience
Many very prominent bloggers grew their blogs rapidly by guest posting.
Chances are, you’re already familiar with the term “guest posting” – but in case not, it simply means writing for someone else’s blog. You’re a guest there and you normally won’t be paid for your contribution, though some sites do pay guest authors.
Many new bloggers think they need to achieve a certain level of success before guest posting. In fact, even large blogs are very open to guest posts from new bloggers.
They care about how well you can write, and how much expertise you can offer, not how many readers your blog currently has.
In the early days of your blog, when you might have a few dozen or a few hundred readers, guest posting can give you a much greater reach. Your post will be seen by thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of readers – and at least some of them will be interested enough in who you are and what you offer. This means you’ll get some significant, very targeted, traffic to your blog.
Top Tip: Guest posting is also a quick way to boost your credibility. Once you’ve written for a large blog, you can include this on your site – perhaps as a mention on your About page, or in a section “As Seen On” in your si